H.R. 2332: A Bill to Reward Peaceful Service and Enable Medical Education
You’ve got to be rich to head into medical school without ending up in a mortgage-sized amount of debt, unless you promise to devote yourself to military service ahead of time. First-term Representative Michael McMahon has in mind some kind of parallel reward for peaceful community service with the introduction of H.R. 2332. McMahon’s bill (cosponsored by fellow first-termer Rep. Gerry Connolly and legacy Rep. John Sarbanes) would give tuition assistance to medical students who either participated in Peace Corps or AmeriCorps service, making medical school more affordable to the students from lower-to-middle income families who tend toward participation in Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. At the same time, tuition assistance would provide a greater incentive for young Americans to spend time in these service programs.
Some oddities emerge in this legislation, suggesting its first-draft status. Peace Corps volunteers, who spend two years in often-difficult circumstances engaged in intensive service, would receive up to two years tuition assistance for medical school at an assistance level of 50-100%. AmeriCorps volunteers, whose sacrifices and commitments are significantly lower, would receive tuition assistance at the same assistance level of 50-100% for a nominally unlimited period of years. There’s also no limitation to the field of medicine in which an aide recipient might practice. It would make sense for tuition aid to be given to medical students more heading toward understaffed specialties, or to medical students willing to work in rural areas where doctors are in short supply. Under the legislation as it currently stands, there would be nothing to prevent an aspiring medical student from putting in a bit of time in an AmeriCorps program and moving on to a subsidized medical school program with the goal of setting up a practice in dermatology or plastic surgery in Beverly Hills.
